TICKETING AND PAYMENT
These complementary visions for widespread deployments of smartcards which work on different modes of transport, and as payment to multiple operators, are building on what is already a well-established and extensive ITSO-compliant smartcard community on bus, where all fi ve major bus operators have already installed ticketing machines capable of reading national concessionary smartcards for the elderly and disabled.
As well as offering their own, branded products, these operators are involved in existing, or planned, regional transport authority schemes such as:
• the Cheshire Travelcard • the NoW card in Cumbria • the Pop card in Tyne and Wear • the Swift card in the West Midlands • the Walrus card in Merseyside and • Yorcard in Yorkshire
South West Smart Applications Limited (SWSAL) is developing a smart ticketing system involving 15 local authorities and 17 transport operators covering the whole of the South West of England.
The aim of all of these schemes is that one smartcard is, or will be, valid for travel on all forms of transport, with any operator.
On top of those already cited:
• Go-Ahead and Stagecoach (working with Oxfordshire County Council) launched an integrated, interoperable service in Oxford in October 2011 where cards and products from either operator can be used on both companies’ buses.
• In Cambridge, Busway smartcards are valid on either Stagecoach or Go-Whippet buses.
• In Scotland, Strathclyde Passenger Transport (SPT) is introducing a smart ticketing scheme as part of a £287m upgrade to Glasgow’s subway network. SPT has established a joint venture
ticketing and payment system and a revenue allocation system. The company will provide this service for Glasgow’s Subway this year, in time for the city as it hosts the Commonwealth Games in July 2014.
“Around half a billion ITSO smartcard transactions were expected to be made in 2012.”
The Subway currently carries 13 million passengers a year. It is anticipated that the smart ticketing system will be rolled out across other modes of transport, creating seamless travel on bus, rail, Subway and ferry services.
Very conservative fi gures currently available on ITSO-compliant smartcard usage in Britain show that:
• Some 15 million ITSO-compliant smartcards have been issued, with 8.5 million currently in live circulation in England, Scotland and Wales being used for both concessionary and commercial journeys.
• Around half a billion ITSO smartcard transactions were expected to be made in 2012 (including more than 275,000 a day in the North East alone).
• Most of these trans- actions have been for concessionary travel, but the increasing focus on commercial ticketing means we are moving towards an estimated 1.5 bil- lion ITSO-compliant smart transport transactions every year by 2014.
Above: Rail minister Norman Baker helping launch a new smart ticketing system for the south west.
• In 2010 there were just over 15,000 ITSO-compliant
ticketing machines (POSTs) processing these transactions. Current estimates suggest that this has more than doubled to 35,000.
But the smartcard is just the start of it. Technological advances mean mobile phone ticketing and online purchases must also be available to satisfy the needs of the travelling public.
The ITSO Specifi cation has developed over the past few years to accommodate these.
ITSO is represented on the NFC (Near Field Communications) Steering Board which brings together the fi nancial services sector, mobile phone operators, retailers and transport organisations to agree common processes for using mobile phones.
And let’s not forget the wider European picture. ITSO has always been, and remains, very closely involved in EU developments around interoperable use of smart ticketing in Europe, as well as establishing standards and protocols which are Europe-wide for both smart and mobile ticketing.
All of this represents major challenges for those working in the smart ticketing fi eld because systems must also be fl exible enough to accommodate different methods of payment.
It might be easy to get carried away with all the bells and whistles that new technology offers. However, while payment methods such as debit/credit cards (EMV) and mobile phone ticketing are part of the solution, the smart ticketing world must take into account the fact that there is still a large percentage of the population which does not have a smartphone or regular access to a bank account, but which regularly uses public transport.
Lindsay Robertson
www.itso.org.uk FOR MORE INFORMATION
rail technology magazine Feb/Mar 13 | 31
company (Nevis Technologies) with Ecebs to
develop a
cashless, multi-modal, multi- operator transport smart media
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